


Disrupting Friendsgiving

by mitchello



Category: Batman - All Media Types, DCU, Spider-Man - All Media Types, The Avengers (Marvel) - All Media Types, Young Justice (Cartoon)
Genre: BAMF Peter Parker, BAMF everyone, But Robin is Tim Drake instead of Dick Grayson, But that doesn't matter because she is in the DC universe, Crossover, Dimension Travel, Gen, Her name is Petra, Peter Parker Acts Like a Spider, Peter Parker is a female, She has also been taken in by Tony Stark, She is hanging out with the Young Justice kids
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-02-25
Updated: 2020-04-27
Packaged: 2021-02-28 04:00:40
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 3
Words: 8,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22887445
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mitchello/pseuds/mitchello
Summary: Petra Stark is familiar with cross-dimensional travel. Six months ago (well six-ish, time is tricky) she returned a Robin who had accidentally fallen through his dimension and into her's back where he belonged. So when she is facing a dangerous man with a poorly made inter-universal ray gun in a warehouse rigged to explode, she does the only reasonable thing and reprograms the machine to transport her to a safe dimension. Naturally, she chooses Robin's, but she doesn't quite end up where she thought she would. Or when she thought she would. Instead, Petra finds herself transported into a strange cave with seven teenagers eating turkey and potatoes at a dining room table.Or: Petra Stark transports herself into the Team's Friendsgiving meal.
Relationships: Artemis Crock & Peter Parker, Peter Parker & Conner Kent, Peter Parker & Jason Todd, Peter Parker & Kaldur'ahm, Peter Parker & M'gann M'orzz, Peter Parker & Wally West, Peter Parker & Zatanna Zatara, Tim Drake & Peter Parker
Comments: 17
Kudos: 223





	1. Chapter 1

Artemis Crock is not a fan of Thanksgiving. Sure, she has plenty to be thankful for. She has the Team, her mom, and… well, that is a lot for her. None of these things, though, are enough to make her like Thanksgiving. That being said, Artemis has no idea how she was roped into a friendsgiving at Mount Justice. 

It’s the Saturday after actual Thanksgiving and somehow Zatanna had convinced M’gann to do the dinner potluck style. Without the fear of the Martian’s cooking, Artemis had no reason not to go. So there she is and it’s not going anywhere near as horribly as Artemis thought it would. 

Artemis is sandwiched between Zatanna and Wally. Boy Wonder is next to Wally. Kaldur, Conner, and M’gann sit across from them. It is very domestic. Way more domestic than Artemis is used to. 

It’s nice. 

Even most of the food is edible. 

Artemis leans back in her chair absorbing the atmosphere. Wally is stuffing his face with the sweet potato casserole Zatanna made. Conner and M’gann keep giving each other looks which let Artemis know they are on a mindlink. Robin is as silent as she is throughout the dinner, but he has a small smile on his face. Artemis takes that as a win. This Robin doesn’t smile nearly enough. 

She reaches forward for another helping of turkey just as a loud clap sounds through the air. 

All the heroes are on their feet in seconds. 

Artemis notes that both she and Robin have weapons despite the pressure for a ‘civilian like evening’. At least nobody can give her crap for it without also having to scold Robin. 

A woman stands next to the closer side of the kitchen counter. Her hair is in braids pinned to her head. A black mask over her nose and mouth. She wears a dark outfit. Artemis assumes it is black at first, but when the woman moves to put her hands up in a gesture of surrender the light catches a metallic sparkle. Upon closer inspection the suit is made up of strategic panels some of which glimmer blue while the others glimmer red. Even the woman's boots have the same red metallic sparkle.

Kaldur takes a step forward and the woman's gaze flicks over to him. 

888

Petra Parker hits the ground. She feels the landing send a wave of pain through her side but she quickly gains control of her momentum and springs into a defensive position.

  
She hears the sound of what can only be chairs pushing across a hard floor.

  
Her spidey sense isn’t going off and she takes that as a good thing because her eyes take a moment to start working again. At first glance she assumes she is in a house. There is a counter behind her with a sink in it and she can hear the hum of a refrigerator. In front of her are seven kids. She places their ages to all be in their teens. They are circled around a table covered in food. Is that turkey? The kids are all wearing casual clothes but two of them have weapons drawn.

  
Petra quickly throws her hands up in the universal gesture of ‘please don’t kill me’ and prays that it means the same thing in this dimension as it does in hers.

  
The house idea starts to sink when she notes that the walls and ceiling are made of stone. Is she in a freaking cave? She silently pleads that this wasn’t another doomsday cult trying to leave the surface world.

  
She makes her body look as non threatening as possible. Looking harmless is hard, though, when you’re wearing a form fitting suit made up of a high-strength material with a patented weave from Earth 202. Petra hasn’t gotten a knife thrown at her yet so she thinks she’s doing a pretty good job.

  
She doesn’t say anything. She isn’t sure what country she is in or what language to speak. She just stands still and calm trying to keep any tension from building.

  
One of the teens steps forward. He has darker skin than the others and what Petra could only describe as gills on the sides of his neck. He is on edge ready to move if she poses a threat but he is doing his best to look pacifistic and draw her attention away from the other kids.

  
“How did you get in here?” His voice is authoritative but not enough that Petra would qualify it as demanding.

  
“Yeah, and who are you?” The redheaded teen asks. The other kids send him a glare.

  
“Uh.” She mentally scorns herself for not being able to get out an intelligible sentence. First impressions are everything and all. She blames her brain short on the whole transporting into a different dimension via unstable machinery. And instead of doing the polite thing and answering either of the questions, Petra feels her mouth move before her brain had completely caught up with the situation, “Is this some weird cult thing?”

  
Her question is obviously not what they expected. The brunette girl even looks a bit offended.

"Not a cult thing."

  
There is a fluttering of glances and tiny shifts in movement. Petra has the vague feeling she is missing a conversation.

  
A sharp sensation pricks at her mind. One Petra can quickly pinpoint due to her nights with Wanda. “Whoever is the mind reader, I don’t let people get that deep in me on first dates.” Petra thinks she sees the green girl blush just a bit before the broad shouldered kid with a black shirt and a red ‘s’ steps in front of her. The rest of the kids tense up even more.

  
Petra feels like she’s met her quota on conflict for the day so she turns on her de escalation switch. “Hey.” She makes sure to smooth her face into a pleasant expression. “I’m not sure where I am. I’m really sorry I barged in on your meal.” She gives a small motion towards the table. “I am not here to cause any trouble.”

  
She is met with skeptical faces. There is another series of small movements. Petra wonders if they can all read each other based on these movements alone. It sure seems like it. She keeps getting glares sent her way.

  
Petra was never one to wait around for other people to make decisions for her so she decides to start doing what a normal captive would do. “I’m going to start removing my weapons, okay? I’m not here for any trouble,” she repeats. She doesn’t move. In her experience, moving before the captors are ready for it is a guarantee to escalate a situation.

  
The gilled kid nods at her. “Slowly.”

  
“Okay. I’m going to move now.” Petra decides to empty everything from all her pockets. She knows that even if the kids frisked her they wouldn’t find every pocket in this suit, but it’s always best to be safe. She starts with the knives in her sleeves. As she turns to put the items onto the counter behind her she notices the kids start approaching her. The brunette and the blonde girls walk so they’re standing opposite her with just the counter between them. The redheaded boy pulls himself to sit on the counter next to where she set her first pair of knives. The boy in the ‘s’ shirt and the green girl lean against the stone wall to Petra’s right. The gilled kid is next to her but also a bit behind her observing her motions. The smallest boy is not in her sight but she can hear him typing something from a corner of the room.

  
She makes her way inwards and downwards. When she pulls the condoms out of a pocket near her ankle and places them on the counter, the blonde woman pushes the redhead off the counter.

The smallest boy walks back towards the group.

There is another moment where Petra feels like a silent conversation is taking place. Petra doesn’t think she’s ever met teenagers this quiet. She pulls her last knife out of the ankle of her other leg and places it on the counter, realizes her mask is still on and pulls it off. She feels the teens look away almost as if they thought they shouldn’t be seeing her face. She turns and stands ready to be frisked. The kids just openly study her face but the small boy seems to understand what she’s doing and he moves to pat her down.

  
He gives the gilled man a nod after he’s done but he still says, “and that’s everything?” He eyes her pile.

  
She understands. For a suit like her’s, she can fit an awful lot inside of it. Thank you, Tony Stark for the design. He gets the importance of women’s clothing having pockets. And a lot of them are hidden so well, unless you know they’re there they’re invisible.

  
She nods to answer the kid's question but halts the motion halfway through. “Fuck. Sorry.” She pulls off her boots. She stands a good five inches shorter as she sets them onto the counter.

  
The blonde girl raises a questioning eyebrow at her. Petra picks one of her boots back up and triggers the dagger that extends from the toe.

  
“Are those heels?” the brunette girl is looking at her with a mix of disbelief. Either from the fact that Petra obviously fought in heels or that she was stupid enough to choose to.

  
“Yeah, I’m a lot more intimidating at 5’9” than at 5’4”.”

  
The blonde girl shook her head at that.

  
“That’s actually everything?”

  
“Yes. For sure this time,” Petra confirms.

  
There is a beat of silence. Petra is getting tired of them pretty quick. She just wants to leave and find Jason. Find if she even made into the correct time period that Jason would recognize her in. “Are we going to do an interrogation or torture or what? And I know you said this wasn’t a cult thing but these silences are getting pretty cult-ish to me.”

  
“Torture?” The redheaded boy stutters, “We’re the good guys!”

  
“Sure.” And Petra knows her tone says she doesn’t believe that at all. She also knows that she should be playing nice, that she doesn’t know what danger she could be in, but this is dragging on a little long for her and if all it takes to leave is a bit of a fight with people of unknown abilities, then that’s what she’ll do. She and Deadpool slayed a titan together, seven teenagers shouldn’t be any harder than that.

  
The tall black haired teen, she really should have asked for introductions, reaches towards her pile. He pulls out her wallet and flips it open. “Petra Stark?”

  
“That’s me.”

  
He frowns at something on her ID as the small boy takes her badge off the counter. “Petra Stark. Bail Enforcement Agent. Universes 150 through 249.” The badge is plucked out of the kid’s hand by the redhead boy. Her ID is placed into the small boy’s hand. “What year is it?”

  
She leans her back into the counter. “Whatever you’re thinking, you’re wrong.” The boy gives her a challenging look. “I’m not a time traveler. Well, obviously I am, but that’s not really it. It’s part of it, but… I’m not a time traveler,” she repeats.

  
The red headed kid looks over the small kid’s shoulder at the ID. “So you’re from the future? Cool! My Uncle time travels sometimes.”

  
Petra can’t help the frown that pulls on the corner of her lips. She really can’t. Time travel is a big no where she is from. God, purposefully time traveling within her own universe would get her fired on the spot. “I’m not from your future.” Petra sorts through her mind trying to find the best way to tell a few teenagers she is from a different dimension.

  
“Are you from a parallel universe?” The small boy gestures at her badge.

  
She mentally praises the kid while remaining slightly surprised that he didn’t think the badge was fake. She lets herself grin at the kid, “Close. Try a whole other dimension.”

  
Petra hears the red headed boy let out a sound of disbelief.

  
The small boy starts typing into a device on his wrist.

  
“Sure,” the blonde girl says sarcastically.

  
Petra is pretty done. The kids can’t manage to ask a good question and she can’t decide if they’re going to attack her or not. “You said you’re the good guys, right?” The gilled boy nods. “I say I’m not here to cause any trouble. I’m not here to hurt anyone. I’m a good guy too. I’ll give you my phone and you can look through it.” Petra hopes that letting people in your phone is as big of a sign of trust in this universe as it is in hers. “In return, let me look into this world. From my viewpoint, I’m stuck with several teenagers I’ve never seen before in an underground hideout that strongly resembles a dangerous cult I dismantled a few years back. This way, you can get my info and I can get yours.”

  
“Our computers have access to very sensitive information. I do not believe it would be wise to allow you access to them.”

  
“Surely you can put on some kind of child lock?”

  
The gilled guy looked at the small one and the small boy nodded. The blonde girl looked at Petra’s pile. “Which phone?”

  
“The smartphone. What information do you think you could even get from that old brick?”

  
“Oh, thank god, I was worried for a moment that flip phones were still normal in your universe,” the brunette girl said.

  
“Fuck no. It’s just for work.” The blonde picks up Petra’s smartphone.

  
The gilled guy makes a motion for Petra to follow him and the other kids fall into line behind her.

  
They travel down a hallway into a room with a long green couch, a glass table, and a TV. On the couch, lays a sleek laptop with a logo that reads ‘Wayne Tech’ on the top. The smallest boy opens up the laptop, types for a few moments, and then pats the couch next to him. Petra takes the seat the boy had motioned to and he promptly places the computer in her lap. The boy stretches out his hand towards the blonde girl and she hands him the cell phone. The boy runs his fingers over the sides of the device. “How do you turn this on?”

  
“Karen,” Petra addresses the AI, “you still working?”

  
The screen of the phone brightens. “Yes, Petra. It seems you have lost your cell phone service? Would you like me to hook you up?”

  
“Please, Karen.”

  
“Wow, Siri sure got upgraded,” the blonde girl mutters.

  
“And, Karen, please allow some guests access to all documents and messages on my phone.”

  
The screen unlocked.

  
“Are you sure you would like to allow your guests complete access?”

  
“Yes.”

  
“Due to Mr. Leed’s ‘Now I Must Bleach My Eyes’ protocol, I would like to remind you of several photos sent to your group chat with Michelle Jones and Gwen Stacy.”

  
“Karen. Don’t let the kids see any nudes. Or home videos.”

  
The blonde girl smacks the redhead boy on the back of the head. Petra is unsure why. The green girl flushes.

  
***

  
Petra set the laptop back onto the glass table. She’d seen enough. The kid finished snooping through her phone about thirty minutes ago. He had periodically asked her questions about information he’d found. When he’d read that she was the daughter of ‘Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist’ Tony Stark, he’d laughed out loud. It was the first time she’d seen him smile. That’s when the phone started getting passed around. The kids seemed pretty entertained by it. The smallest boy started geeking out once he realized Karen was far more complex than Siri. Petra had to stop her own research once to keep the boy from taking her phone apart when he realized the battery wasn’t dropping. When he connected it with the Arc Reactor articles he read, she thought she might physically have to fight him to keep him from dissecting her phone. He kept mumbling, “Your dad’s a genius,” over and over as he read the articles saved on her phone.

  
She evaluates the kids again. Miss Martian and Superboy are obviously a couple. There is something between Artemis and Kid Flash, they probably don’t even know it yet. She was in a dimension where Atlantis was real and that blew her mind. Aqualad is definitely the responsible one. Calling them by superhero names is going to get annoying fast. “So. My name is Petra. Can I get some introductions?”  
Aqualad introduces himself first then the rest of the kids give her their names. It reminds Petra of the only day she went to public school and having to do ice breakers. She almost asks for fun facts about them.

  
Tim studies Petra for a moment. “You’re Spider-Woman, right?” She makes a sound of confirmation. “Then why are you wearing that?” He motions at her suit.

  
Petra laughs. It’s a good question. One with a lot of possible answers. She had a man to kill and Spider-Woman doesn’t kill people so she wore her murder suit. That doesn’t sound like a good answer. So she simplifies it. “I wasn’t doing my job as Spider-Woman. I was doing a job as Petra Stark. Petra Stark doesn’t know Spider-Woman much less wear her suit.”

  
“So, how did you get here?”

  
This was also a good question. Also with a lot of answers but Petra could make this one concise pretty fast. “I was fighting a man with a dangerous machine in a warehouse rigged to blow. I wasn’t going to get out in time so I programmed his machine to get me here before frying itself. This was the safest option.”

  
Tim leans back into the couch. He looks like he’s mentally sorting all the information Petra has given him. “How are you going to get home?”

  
Petra wants to know the answer to that too. She needs some very expensive materials in order to build an inter-dimensional transport that isn’t going to shatter reality. Not to mention that she is going to have to wait to use it until after this dimension has healed itself. The nasty machine she used to get there would have caused tremendous damage to the structural stability of both her dimension and this one. Breaking through them again before they’ve corrected themselves could potentially cause reality to collapse. She explains this to all of them. She isn’t sure they completely get it. She thinks Tim does. And maybe Wally.

  
There is another moment of silence. The kids are all giving each other looks. Can they read each other’s minds?

  
“We’ll allow you to stay here until you can go back to your own world.”


	2. Tim's Pile of Knowledge

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tim's reaction to Petra Stark.

Tim Drake has read every single one of Batman’s files. It’s something he prides himself on. He knows the ins and outs of all the cases Batman has ever saved on the Batcomputer. So he feels slightly embarrassed when a woman appears out of nowhere in the Cave and he didn’t immediately connect the dots to one of Batman’s old reports. 

It’s one of the ones that dates back to before Tim but after Dick. The Jason period. It’s the only file on dimensional travel Batman has and it’s the one that all of Batman’s dimensional contingencies are based on. Though, the contingencies are essentially: don’t fuck with other dimensions. Tim can barely remember what’s in the file. Something about a woman appearing with Jason thirty miles away from where Jason was just with Bruce. How Bruce initially assumed it was teleportation until a woman wearing a white suit with a large red spider across the back started to lecture him. So when the woman starts to pile knives onto the kitchen counter he turns to his phone and quickly retrieves the file. 

The report is surprisingly bare. Maybe Bruce didn’t think information from another dimension was pertinent or maybe Jason was reluctant to share his experience. Tim isn’t really sure why there is so little. Bruce is typically very thorough. 

Tim thinks the best summary for the report is this: Jason fell through the cracks of reality and landed in a different universe, while he was there he encountered a superhero named Spider-Woman, she took Jason under her wing for a about five months before she was able to build a device to take him back to his own world, when they arrived she told Bruce cross-dimensional travel was a messy, unethical business, that she would be back to visit soon, and her name was Petra. 

Tim doesn’t inform the Team of his discovery yet. He wants to make sure he’s right. Bats don’t make assumptions they make certain. 

_Do you think Batman keeps condoms in his utility belt?_ Wally asks in the mindlink. Artemis pushes him off the counter and Tim decides he should start moving things along. 

He walks back to the counter. The Team is engrossed in the mindlink arguing about superheroes most likely to have sex while in their suits. Their attention is only partly on the woman until she pulls her mask off. The mindlink silences as the Team instinctively looks away from the bare face. They all know how important it is to keep a secret identity. None of them would ever unmask in an unknown environment yet this woman did it without hesitation. Tim knows it’s probably because she doesn’t even exist in this world but with all his training he can’t help but find it discomforting. 

Tim notices his teammates get over their initial nervousness and start staring at her. He also notices that she’s waiting for somebody to frisk her down and everyone else is too busy committing the details of her face to memory to do it. He pats her down but, honestly, with the amount of shit on the counter and the design of the suit, Tim is pretty sure she could have a nuclear bomb in that thing and he wouldn’t even notice. He decides if she turns out to be cool to ask if she can get him a suit by the same designer. Though, he still wants to see how well the material can hold up in a fight. 

Tim sends confirmation to Kaldur that she is clean. He looks at the pile. On second thought, he decides to directly ask the woman. 

The daggers in the shoes were unexpected. 

Tim wonders if he should have just scanned her. If she is who he thinks she is, it doesn’t matter. But if she isn’t… 

There are seven of them. They can take one freaky teleporting woman in their home base. 

_Who fights in heels?_ Artemis asks. _You’d think with all those pockets she’d at least be a sensible woman. But no. She fights in five inch heels._

_What’s so bad about that?_ And just like that Wally starts Zatanna and Artemis off on a long tangent about women’s clothing and the pain that it brings. 

_We don’t even know if she has to run in them though. She might be able to fly._ M’gann states. 

_Yeah, but if she can fly, why wear heels for the added height?_ Which, Tim thinks, is a surprisingly good point for Conner to bring up. 

The woman interrupts their silent conversation and Wally practically flinches at the mention of torture. 

Conner reaches into her belongings on the counter and takes out her wallet. “Petra Stark?” 

Tim feels relieved at the sound of the name. Sure enough it was Jason’s friend from a different dimension. Tim decides to figure out how to feel about that fact later. 

Tim takes a badge from the pile and reads the information out loud for Team. Wally snatches it out of his hands with a mutter of _Agent of the multiverse? Cool!_ in the mindlink. There is no doubt in Tim’s mind that the badge is real. He already knows that she can travel dimensions, working across parallel universes isn’t really a stretch after that. 

Conner places her ID into his hands. Her birthdate read 2001. She is not ten years old. Tim asks her the year. 

She says she isn’t a time traveller. Tim realizes that she thinks that he thinks she’s from the future of this world. Wally makes the same assumption when he sees the ID too. 

Tim doesn’t miss Petra’s frown at the mention of purposeful time travel but doesn’t comment on it. 

Tim feels certain that this Petra is the same as the one from Bruce’s old file, but he still wants her to confirm it for him. He makes it seem as though he thinks she is just doing her job in their world and asks if she’s from another universe. 

“Close. Try a whole other dimension.”

And just like that, Tim has all the information he needs.

Tim begins to pull up the file on his wrist computer but Artemis’s comment and the change in the woman’s posture stops him. 

Petra has shifted her stance just enough to make Tim feel on edge. She seems a bit frustrated. 

She points out how the situation feels from her point of view, something Tim hadn’t even thought about, and offers them her phone in return for information about their world. 

It’s completely unnecessary. Tim has files that can confirm her identity and the fact that she is friendly. 

Kaldur responds before Tim can say anything. 

Then again, Tim would love to see whatever is on her phone. Would her phone even work in this dimension? 

_Would it be safe for her to use your laptop?_

Tim nods, deciding that getting information from her world is worth waiting to let the team know she’s met Batman before. 

After Artemis grabs the smartphone off the counter, Kaldur gestures for Petra to follow him. 

They make it to the lounge Tim’s laptop is in and Tim quickly sets it up for her. He taps the cushion next to him for her to sit down. She takes his laptop and starts her search. Tim doesn’t even look to see what she decides to look up, instead he immediately reaches out for her phone. It has a sleek design and is incredibly thin. Tim runs his finger across the sides looking for the ‘on’ button but doesn’t find one. 

After Petra turns the phone on for him, tells her version of Siri not to let him see any pornography, and Wally makes an inopropriate comment in the mindline which gets him a punch from Artemis, Tim opens up her downloads. 

There’s a surprising number of scientific journal articles, mostly of them are about chemistry but there are also a number of engineering and clean energy articles. 

Then a random newspaper article, “Tony Stark Seen at Local Park With Daughter”. A blurry photo of Petra and an older man in a hoodie laying in the grass is under the title. Tim finds himself reading the article, “Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist Tony Stark took time off to spend an afternoon with his daughter this Saturday”. Tim can’t help but laugh. Of course Jason would make friends with a hero who is the daughter of a famous, rich dude. 

“How long ago was this?” He turns the phone so she can see the article. 

She doesn’t answer right away. A small frown is on her face. “Time is-” She stretches her arm and twists her hand like it explains everything that time is. She seems like she’s trying to answer an impossible question. “It’s March 2019 where I left. That was late October 2018.” 

“Wait, how old are you?” Wally’s head snaps up from where he was reading over Tim’s shoulder to look at Petra. 

“Don’t you know it’s rude to ask a woman her age?”

There isn’t any heat in it. She goes back to reading whatever she has on the laptop. 

Tim recalls the birthdate on her ID. That makes her seventeen. Still older than every member of the Team but definitely younger than Tim guessed when she appeared. He knows from experience not to say he thought she was older so he keeps his mouth shut. 

Wally takes the phone out of his hands and scans the article. “So your dad is pretty rich?”

“Tony Stark has a net worth of $12.4 billion.” 

Wally drops the phone in surprise, but Tim catches it. 

“Siri, what the fuck?”

“Her name is Karen.” Petra replies. Tim thinks it’s a conditioned correction because she didn’t even seem to notice she had spoken. 

“Karen?”

“What can I do for you?” 

“Woah,” Tim accidentally whispers, “I’m not sure what you can do, actually.”

The voice apologizes for not introducing herself then explains that she is an advanced artificial intelligence system created by Tony Stark and can assist ‘Petra’s guests’ in navigating her phone as well as answer any questions they might have. 

Tim asks Karen to pull up all articles concerning Tony Stark. Tim scrolls through them. There are about thirty ranging from scientific journal articles written by him to gossip columns about him. Tim clicks into a few. Tim starts to understand the title ‘Genius, Billionaire, Playboy, Philanthropist’ very quickly. 

Tim gets a little engrossed in the articles. He doesn’t even realize he’s mumbling praises about Tony Stark’s mind until he hears Petra give a light chuckle.

He finds one article and two photos about the heroes of Petra’s world. There is little information in the article. It’s mostly an argument about the ethics of heroics. He learns they’re called the Avengers, that Tony Stark is Iron Man, and Spider-Woman is not a member of their team. The article clearly labels her as a vigilante mostly in Queens. 

Tim drags the settings down. The battery life hasn’t dropped at all. 

“What type of charger does this take?”

“It’s Stark Tech.” 

Tim doesn’t get why she says that like it should explain everything until he remembers that he literally just read an article about how her dad literally built a suit out of scraps while being held hostage in a cave and the freaking arc reactor. 

Artemis eventually snatches the phone out of Tim’s hand and starts going through the pictures. 

They’re good pictures. Really good. A few of them are shots of Spider-Woman in her white suit with the large red spider on her back curling over her shoulders and around her waist. None of them had her wearing the dark outfit she’s currently in. 

Zatanna gets a hold of it next and starts going through text messages. 

Eventually, they’ve gone through nearly everything on the phone. 

She takes longer to finish. She places the laptop onto the table and then gives them all an analytical once over that Tim usually associated with Barbara. Sometimes Bruce, but only when he wanted you to know he was doing it. 

They finally give out introductions. Something Tim hadn’t even noticed they’d forgone. It’s strange. 

Tim knows there isn’t any information he could have gotten that would lead him to believe that she is Spider-Woman, but the suit change is bothering him. It’s the only thing that doesn’t match up. 

Her answer to it makes sense. Her title _is_ Petra Stark. Bail Enforcement Agent _not_ Spider-Woman. Bail Enforcement Agent. 

Tim knows she’s previously been to this world before but he still asks her how she got here. 

He thought it was on purpose.

The file did say she promised to visit. 

Tim thought she just didn’t end up in New Jersey like she thought she would. Then again, if she can get Jason within a thirty mile radius of where he slipped through reality and back at the same moment he disappeared, he should have realized that her arriving confused in the Cave five years after dropping Jason off with Bruce was hastily planned. 

And by hastily planned, Tim means that she literally built an inter-dimensional transport, in the middle of a fight, out of some dude’s death machine. 

Tim figures that it should be easy for her to leave.

Tim is wrong. 

She explains that she doesn’t want to shatter reality, that the machine she used to get here seriously damaged the structure of reality of both of their dimensions, how it needs to heal before she can leave, and a few other things Tim hopes Wally understands. 

She doesn’t ask to stay. 

She doesn’t ask for materials. 

Kaldur addresses the mindlink, _How much of this do we believe?_

_She’s telling the truth._ Tim uses the mindlink to tell them about the small file she is mentioned in.

_That doesn’t necessarily mean we should trust her,_ Artemis argues. 

_She hasn’t done anything to make us believe otherwise._

_Yeah, she’s been very cooperative,_ Wally adds. 

_I know we said we were only going to inform the League if we had to, but how about we let her stay and we inform Batman. He’s already ran into her once. I’d rather not throw out a girl from an alternate dimension who swings through Queens and has New Yorkers give her churros._

They’d all seen a screenshot of a selfie of Spider-Woman and an elderly lady captioned “Thanks for the Churro” posted to Instagram that one of Petra’s friends had sent her. The friend had also messaged, “Spider-Woman is only in the vigilante business for the free food”. 

There is another small round of debate within the mindlink. 

Then a decision. 

_We let her stay but we tell Batman._

Kaldur informs her that she’s welcome to stay in the Cave. 

Tim wonders if this means Friendsgiving is over for the day. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I hope this helps explain the Team's reactions to Petra. I meant to get this chapter out a few days ago, but I finally managed to pump it out tonight. It's not my fave but it's here. I'm planning on another chapter in April so I hope y'all will stay tuned. Coronavirus has me back from college and in my parents' house. Hopefully, online classes will give me more time to work on this fic.


	3. Chapter 3

Petra makes a mental map of the Cave throughout M’gann’s tour. She nods and comments when necessary, keeping a friendly smile on her face to match the Martian’s cheery attitude, but she also focuses her attention on the problems at hand. She makes a step-by-step plan on what she needs to do during the next three-ish months she's stuck in this world. 

  1. Get a laptop
  2. Make a program that will let her know when it’s safe to pop back to her earth
  3. Find out where to get the materials she needs to make the transport 
  4. Set up a business to make enough money to buy said materials
    1. Create an identity 
    2. Get a bank account
  5. Ransack the Cave until she had what she needed for a holotable because, yeah, it was 2011 in this world but she was _not_ designing anything on paper.
  6. Design a sleeker version of the transport and adjust materials needed
  7. Buy, build, leave



Then there are some other things she wants to do but in no particular order:

  * Optimistically, say hi to Jason. (No, she hadn’t googled him. She didn’t want the kids checking the search history and seeing that she’d looked up the second Robin by name. Also, she is going to have a _talk_ with Bruce Wayne at some point to figure out what Tim is doing in the costume.)
  * Try some new foods
  * Make some friends



She feels satisfied with her plan and notes every room she saw that had some form of tech in it. She’ll go back to scavenge through them when she wants to build the holotable.

“So.” M’gann claps her hands together out in front of her waist. “This hallway is where the rooms are.” She stops at the third door down on the right. “You can stay in this one.” She swings the door open and Petra follows her inside. “Zatanna, Conner, and I live here too. The others come and go when they want, but they don’t live in the Cave. Bathroom’s through there-” M’gann points at a door on the far side of the room- “and that about covers it. If you need anything let me know! Us girls can all go shopping in the morning, it’ll be a lot of fun. There are some cute stores around.”

“I don’t know if it’d be smart for me to use my currency here.” Yes, she has somewhere around $500 in her wallet, but this dimension could already have bills with the same serial numbers or her money could look different and be taken as counterfeit. 

“Hello, Megan! Of course. We have a budget so don’t worry about it. Okay, this is the end of our tour. I need to go clean up dinner. Um, everybody else is probably in the lounge. Would you like to come with me or stay here and settle in?”

“How about I get my stuff,” she almost calls it shit but this is a kid she’s talking to, “off the counter and bring it here, then I can chill out with everyone.”

M’gann agrees and starts leading the way back to the kitchen. 

“Tim said you’re a hero, right? Spider-Woman?” M’gann asks. She walks beside Petra comfortably like they’ve been friends for ages. Petra finds it kind of cute how eager to please the Martian is. 

“Vigilante, but, yup. That’s me.” Petra corrects lightly. 

“Do you have any powers? I can pass through solid objects, shape-shift, fly, I have telekinesis, oh, and telepathy. But you already knew about that one from earlier. How did you notice my presence right away?”

How is this girl able to warm up to strangers so fast? “I have a friend back in my world. The Scarlet Witch. She does mind stuff too. She’s practiced a lot on me, so I’ve gotten pretty good at knowing when someone is trying to mess around in my head. And how to block it.” Petra explains just for the sake of conversation. “As far as powers go, I have a few. They don’t call me Spider-Woman for nothing.”

They pass through the lounge and, sure enough, the other kids are spread out on the floor and across couches with a movie Petra doesn’t recognize playing on the TV. 

“Hey, Miss M. We already cleaned up.” Tim informs. He has his laptop open on his legs and his back against the couch. 

“Aw. Thanks guys! Petra is going to put her stuff up and then come hang out.”

M’gann follows her the rest of the way to the kitchen and offers to help Petra carry her things. Petra accepts and hands M’gann some of the non-sharp items. She slips her knives back into their pockets and grabs her badge and wallet. 

M’gann blushes at the condoms. 

“How old are you?” Petra can’t help but ask. 

M’gann’s blush deepens. “Forty-eight, but, um, human biologically speaking I’m sixteen.” Her eyes dart to the condoms. “How old are you?”

That’s a hard question to answer. Mostly because she doesn’t really know. “You asking legally, physically, or how long I’ve literally been alive for? Because those all have different answers.”

M’gann wrinkles her eyebrows together. “How does that work?”

“Well, I was born in August of 2001 and the day I left my world is March of 2019, so legally, in my world, I’m seventeen. Physically, my best guess is a little over nineteen. Sometimes the people that hire us as bail enforcement give us tech that doesn’t let us age while we’re hunting down their fugitives, so I’ve lived longer than my body has aged.” That’s the simplest way to explain it. 

“Oh. Okay.” 

M’gann makes a gesture to encourage Petra to start walking. Instead of carrying the items, M’gann opts to use her telekinesis to make them float right behind them. 

M’gann chatters about the team, telling Petra what feels like their entire history, but she listens and asks questions to make sure M’gann knows she’s paying attention. 

And, holy shit, if Pepper ever came to this earth, she’d tear up every superhero for child endangerment. They are using teenage kids to run covert ops for them for Christ’s sake. 

Maybe it’s a bit hypocritical for Petra to disapprove. She’s a crime fighting teen too, afterall, but in her world she is, like, the only one. They don’t even let the kids in the X-Mansion go out to save the world. Plus, she was never a regular kid to begin with. How could she be when she had a mad scientist father that had tested his modified-spider-super-soldier-serum on his own daughter? Then, S.H.I.E.L.D. killed her parents after they tried to sell the serum to Hydra and instead of putting Petra in foster care, she was passed around from agent to agent because, “having a kid paints an undercover image way easier than anything else”. It wasn’t until Deadpool threatened Nick Fury that she was finally sent to New York. So, no, she’d never been a regular kid. She doesn’t know if these teens have histories like hers, but the fact that they all have matching mentors that look like they’re grooming these kids to take their place, well, it rubs Petra the wrong way. 

It’d rubbed her the wrong way when Jason had told her about it, too, but seeing it first hand makes Petra want to call Pepper and start a lawsuit. 

They get to the room and M’gann uses her telekinesis to set Petra’s stuff down neatly on the desk and set her boots down next to the door. Petra lays out her knives, wallet, and badge on top of the dresser.

“You mind if I take off my outer layer real quick before we head back down?” Petra gestures to the dark red and blue metallic aramid she’s wearing. M’gann nods and Petra unzips the front of her suit, not that anyone would ever know there’s a zipper there. Again, thank you, Tony Stark, for the design. She slides it down until it piles around her feet and then steps out of it. 

Underneath, Petra is wearing a simple black jumpsuit that she may or may not have stolen from Natasha. Hey, it’s a comfortable jumpsuit and she needs something between her skin and the enforced fabric, unlike her spidey suit, which she barely wears anything under (it provides virtually no protection but it’s very comfortable). 

She catches M’gann looking her over. 

“You’re very pretty,” the Martian tells her. 

“Thank you.” Petra makes sure it sounds genuine even though she usually responds to compliments like that with ‘I know’. There are several reasons the media calls her Spider-Woman not Spider-Girl and almost every single one of them is appearance based. She lets the kid feel appreciated though. 

She grabs her smartphone. “Ready.”

“So, do you have a team back in your world?” M’gann asks as they begin walking back to the lounge. 

“God, no.” Petra can’t even imagine herself getting a group of heroes together. “I’m a vigilante. There are some people I team up with pretty often, but, like, I’m not on a team. I like to do my own thing and if somebody needs my help, they have to cash in a favor. Not always. I help the Avengers for fun. Their missions are usually a good time. But like one time I helped Wade, another vigilante or antihero or whatever, fight some… actually, I’m not sure how appropriate that story is. Uh, anyways, a week later, I’m supposed to have date night and Carnage, one of my baddies, is out running around and I call up Wade, cash in my favor, and he takes care of it while I eat Italian.”

“What if you ever need help and nobody owes you?”

“Then I’ll owe whoever gives me a hand.”

M’gann doesn’t appear convinced. 

“Look, when I say I owe someone it holds a lot of weight. They know I’ll never ask them to do something they wouldn’t be okay with and I only ask for things that are of equal or lesser value. They do the same when it comes to what they ask me to do. And we never renege on favors,” she explains. 

“Isn’t that lonely? I mean, the Team is always here for me. I can’t imagine not having them around.” 

Petra puts on a look of soft understanding. “I have other people I spend time with. I have friends and whenever I want to hang out with other heroes, I go to Avengers Tower. There are a lot of people in New York. It’s kind of hard to be lonely there. Speaking of which, where exactly are we?”

“I can’t believe I forgot to tell you! We’re in Mount Justice, just outside of Happy Harbour, Rhode Island.” 

“ Happy Harbor?” That sounds made up. She wrinkles her face up at the name.

M’gann laughs at her expression.

They enter the lounge and M’gann floats over to the couch to take a seat next to Conner. Petra decides to sit on the floor in front of the couch next to Tim. The same movie from before is still playing on the TV. Petra has no idea what it is. She doesn’t think she’s ever seen commercials for it either. 

She opens her phone without verbal commands to Karen and thanks whatever deity that the AI had gotten her service. Even if it was illegal. “Do you guys have wi-fi?” She whisper-asks Tim. That way she could stop feeling bad about using a service she wasn’t paying for. 

Tim holds his hand out for her phone. She gives it over and notices him check it out again before entering in the wi-fi information. He passes it back to her. 

“Thanks.” She means it. 

She starts googling the materials she needs for the transport. Which was technically step three of her mental plan, but it’d be a waste of time not to do it now. She starts a list in the notes application of each item, their cost, and links to where to make the purchases from. Things are going pretty smoothly until she looks up ‘vibranium’. No results. She then tries ‘reverbium’. No results. Okay. Fine. It’s fine. She has her custom vibranium knife set with her. She can use those. 

She really does not want to use those. They were beautiful with little spiders on the hilts. They were a one of a kind set: six throwing knives, two fixed blade karambits, and two fairbairn-sykes. Using one of them for the transport would be a tragedy. 

She’ll do what she has to, though. 

Wally slides off of the couch and onto the floor beside her. “Are you not a big Harry Potter fan?” he asks with a tilted smile. 

She’d caught on that Harry is the main character of the movie. She assumes 'Harry Potter' is also the movie's title. “I’ve never heard of it before,” she replies, quietly, because at least three people were shooting them death glares. 

“You’ve never heard of Harry Potter?”

“Must not be a thing in my world.”

“Okay, what about _The Matrix_?”

She shakes her head no. 

“ _The Shining_?”

“No.”

“That’s a classic! How can _The Shining_ not exist in your world?”

Petra shrugs. She’d had a similar conversation with Jason when he’d told her he’d never seen Star Wars before. She’d made him watch all of them with her on the big screen at the Tower. 

“Hey, do you guys have vibranium on this earth?” She changes the topic. 

“Have what?” 

Petra explains the properties and the make up of the metal. 

“We don’t have anything like that,” Tim speaks up from her other side. “How badly is that going to set you back?”

“It won’t,” she assures him. “It just means I have to break up my knife set.”

She finishes all that she can of step three and moves onto step four. She dives deep into the web. Getting a fake identity is a pain in the ass. 

Tim leans over to look at her phone. “What are you doing?” 

“That depends. You a nark?” 

He gives her an unamused look but she thinks she sees a smile pull at his lips for a second. “By the definition.” 

“Then buzz off, kid.”

“So whatever you’re doing is illegal. You’re two hours into an alternate dimension, surrounded by its heroes, and you’re breaking the law right next to them,” Tim states like he’s informing her she’s an idiot. 

She raises a brow and glances up from her phone, challenging him to tell her off. “Yup,” she says, popping the ‘p’. 

“And you think we’re just going to let it slide?”

“Look, kid.” Tim clenches his jaw, obviously not a fan of the moniker. She isn’t going to stop calling them kids no matter how much any of them hate it. “I need an identity for while I’m here and there's no legal way to get one. It’s seedy, and a bit deplorable in all honesty, but it’s done how it’s done.”

The kid blinks at her. “We can set you up with one.”

“So it’s okay for you to do illegal stuff but not me.”

“Yes.”

“Nah, kid, that’s not going to fly with me. I’ll get a dead kid’s SSN without help from the tiny, Robin Hood esque vigilante. Afterall, I wouldn’t want to corrupt the next generation of heroes on this earth.”

“You’re full of shit, lady,” Artemis says from the far corner of the couch. 

“Either hook her up or let her do it herself, but choose now because the giant chess scene is coming up and it’s my favorite so I’d like it to be  _ quiet _ ,” Zatanna tells Tim. 

He frowns and is silent for a beat. “Which way are you doing it?”

Petra scoots closer to him and angles her phone so he can easily read it from beside her. Tim watches for a few moments then turns his attention back to the files he has pulled up on his laptop. 

For a while, the only sound in the room comes from the movie. The rest of the kids had taken Zatanna seriously when she’d said she wanted it to be quiet. 

Petra works out all the kinks for her new identity. When the end credits of the movie play, she informs the kids she needs to be at the corner of Earl and Morton on Thursday at noon to pick up her ID, birth certificate, and Social Security card. 

Tim is giving her a strange look: part admiration and part curiosity. 

“Did I just see you pay from a bank account used by Lex Luthor?” he asks. 

“That depends. You a nark?” she repeats what she’d said earlier with a wink and a grin. 

A few different versions of, “we hate Lex Luthor,” chorus from the other kids. 

Except for Kaldur. “Thievery is typically not condoned among us.” 

He is good at making Petra feel like the child. She’ll give him props for that. “Borrowed. He’ll get it back. But technically the account doesn’t even exist and I don’t know if you can steal from something that’s not real.”

“How did you find it if it doesn’t exist?”

Petra responds by widening her grin. 

The kids start doing the silent communication thing again. 

Wait. 

M’gann’s powers. 

“Are you guys using telepathy right now?” A few guilty looks. Mostly from M’gann and Wally. The others are either blank faced or looking at Petra like they wouldn’t mind killing her. Actually, only Artemis is giving her that last one. 

“Sorry,” M’gann apologizes. “We use the mindlink a lot.”

“Uh. Okay… Another question: do you not have any adult supervision?”

“Currently, members of the League are on a rotating schedule to watch after us,” Kaldur answers. 

“Who is supposed to be here today? Because I don’t want somebody coming in later, thinking I’m a threat, and starting a fight.”

“Due to pressing League matters, we are on our own for tonight. Tomorrow afternoon, our scheduled caretaker will be back.”

“Cool.”

There is another moment of silence while the kids all talk telepathically. 

She’s got to get Wanda to learn how to do that when she gets back. 

Wally zips away from the room and Artemis opens a cabinet and pulls out two movies. They must decide through the mindlink which one they want to watch because nobody speaks the whole time. Artemis puts in the disk.

Wally comes back holding a huge blue bowl of popcorn. He flops down into the couch next to Artemis and holds the bowl out towards her. 

The title _ The Goonies _ appears on the screen. Another movie she’s never seen.

She sets her phone down and decides to pay attention to the screen. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> In case anybody is wondering what all was inside of Petra's Suit: a flip phone, a smartphone, condoms, 6 throwing knives, two karambits, two fairbairn sykes, a generic tactical knife, a trench knife, wallet, badge, a pack of gum, ChapStick, two protein bars made for enhanced humans, a tiny container of hand sanitizer, ear buds, exactly seven paper clips all various colors non of which were in the same pocket, a key that Petra has no idea what it opens, and a tiny plastic taco that Wade got from a vending machine capsule the last time they were out together (he asked her to hold it for him and she forgot to give it back). 
> 
> Another thing: I know 0 things about knives. Google is my only source on the subject, sorry if I used any that don't make sense. 
> 
> Also, I believe that in Petra's world there aren't any Warner Bros. movies and in the Team's world there aren't any Disney movies.


End file.
